“The latest cabinet meetings aren’t televised for a reason. Fear not, our de facto leader is in control as the ethnic cleansing of the country formerly known as the United States roars ahead unabated. The must-see TV drama not being broadcast is Whose Turn Is It to Change the Old Guy’s Diaper?” John Buss, @repeat 1968
Good Day Sky Dancers!
As we stare down the 250th anniversary of the day our country started its journey from monarchy to democracy, we have to take a look at where we’ve landed today and utter some word of disappointment. The headlines today are filled with references to autocracy, and it’s not difficult to see how the MAGA/Trump overreach is playing out.
Politicosums up the current situation like this. “Trump’s second year: Whiplash. Even proposals that don’t ultimately move forward have consequences.” I’d just like a few more adjectives like weird, cruel, and inexplicably unnecessary.
President Donald Trump’s first year back in office was defined by sweeping upheaval that was largely plotted out during his four-year Florida exile. But the president has somehow intensified the volatility in year two with a succession of whiplash-inducing policy swings, several of which have almost immediately withered in the face of Republican opposition and public outcry.
It came after Trump threatened to decertify Canadian aircraft, a move deemed “unjustified and dangerous” by a Washington-based aerospace trade union that the president soon dropped. Trump said in early January that he’d cap credit card rates at 10 percent, a move that would have upended the banking industry, only to change his mind and ask Congress for legislation.
Also last month, Trump’s administration paused millions in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state public health infrastructure — only to reverse course roughly 24 hours later.
“The whiplash has real implications,” said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a forum of the leaders of metropolitan health departments. “It’s incredibly disruptive, even if you can get back to continuing the work, you know, two days later.”
The unpredictability of a presidency that prioritizes posting over process and often leaves friends and foes alike guessing whether pronouncements should be taken seriously, literally, or both, remains a feature, not a bug of Trump’s approach to governance. In many matters, especially negotiations with other countries, his mercurial opacity is often an attempt to gain leverage, but his threats seemingly lead just as often to backtracking as blowing things up, be they Iranian missile depots, Venezuelan drug boats or the transatlantic alliance.
The same often holds true for domestic policy. The president has made numerous pronouncements with emphatic declarations on social media, sometimes even suggesting he is governing by fiat in cases where legislation is required. But he has quickly moved on from many of them: a cap on credit card interest rates, 50-year mortgages and, according to a new Financial Times report, possibly even the sweeping tariffs on aluminum and steel that have led to higher costs.
We’re just beginning to explore the depths of depravity that Trump and his buddies will go to just feel powerful and get richer. This is from Robert Reich’s SubStack. “The Squalor of the Epstein Class. Happy Presidents Day!”
Here’s how Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie responded on Sunday, during ABC’s “This Week,” to a question about the Trump regime’s handling of the Epstein files:
“This is about the Epstein class …. They’re billionaires who were friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people, in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration. And they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”
The Epstein Class. Not just the people who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein or the subset who abused young girls. It’s an interconnected world of hugely rich, prominent, entitled, smug, powerful, self-important (mostly) men. Trump is honorary chairman.
Trump is still sitting on two and a half million files that he and Pam Bondi won’t release. Why? Because they implicate Trump and even more of the Epstein class. The files that have been released so far don’t paint a pretty picture.
Trump appears 1,433 times in the Epstein files so far. His billionaire backers are also members. Elon Musk appears 1,122 times. Howard Lutnick is there. So is Trump-backer Peter Thiel (2,710 times), and Leslie Wexner (565 times). As is Steven Witkoff, now Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s consigliere (1,855 times).
The Epstein Class isn’t limited to Trump donors. Bill Clinton is a member (1,192 times), as is Larry Summers (5,621 times). So are LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (3,769 times), Prince Andrew (1,821 times), Bill Gates (6,385 times), and Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants (429 times).
If not politics, then what connects the members of the Epstein Class? It’s not just riches. Some members are not particularly wealthy, but they’re richly connected. They trade on their prominence, on whom they know and who will return their phone calls.
They exchange inside tips on stocks, on the movements of currencies, on IPOs, on new tax-avoidance mechanisms. On getting into exclusive clubs, reservations at chic restaurants, lush hotels, exotic travel.
Most members of the Epstein Class have seceded into their own small, self-contained world, disconnected from the rest of society. They fly in one other’s private jets. They entertain at one other’s guest houses and villas. Some exchange tips on how to procure certain drugs or kinky sex or valuable works of art. And, of course, how to accumulate more wealth.
Many don’t particularly believe in democracy; Peter Thiel (recall, he appears 2,710 times in the Epstein files) has said he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Many are putting their fortunes into electing people who will do their bidding. Hence, they are politically dangerous.
The Epstein Class is the by-product of an economy that emerged over the last two decades, from which this new elite has siphoned off vast amounts of wealth.
It’s an economy that bears almost no resemblance to that of mid-20th-century America. The most valuable companies in this new economy have few workers because they don’t make stuff. They design it. They create ideas. They sell concepts. They move money.
I’ve always argued here and in classes that the biggest economic policies of the Reagan and Bush years were tax cuts that made it more profitable to gamble on financial assets rather than to actually produce goods and services. The changes in tax policies that cut upper brackets, then treated capital gains as a tax slash, and other ridiculous policies mean that money never lands where it can actually do good. It also creates a lot of idle hands and minds.
China is beginning to look more modern, more concerned about actual economic outcomes, and the planet. The U.S. continues to race back to the Gilded Age with hints of the Great Depression years. This is from The Guardian. “The Guardian view on Donald Trump and the climate crisis: the US is in reverse while China ploughs ahead. Editorial. The president’s destructive policies enrich fossil fuel billionaires, while Beijing has bet big on the green transition.”
Devastating wildfires, flooding and winter storms were among the 23 extreme weather and climate-related disasters in the US which cost more than a billion dollars last year – at an estimated total loss of $115bn. The last three years have shattered previous records for such events. Last Wednesday, scientists said that we are closer than ever to the point after which global heating cannot be stopped.
Just one day later, Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, announced the elimination of the Obama-era endangerment finding which underpins federal climate regulations. Scrapping it is just one part of Mr Trump’s assault on environmental controls and promotion of fossil fuels. But it may be his most consequential. Any fragment of hope may lie in the fact that a president who has called global heating a “hoax” framed this primarily as about deregulation – perhaps because the science is now so widely accepted even in the US.
The administration claimed, without evidence, that Americans would save $1.3tn. Never mind insurance or healthcare costs; a recent report found that US earnings would be 12% higher without the climate crisis. The Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse called the decision “corruption, plain and simple”. In 2024, Mr Trump reportedly urged 20 fossil fuel tycoons to stump up $1bn for his presidential campaign – while vowing to remove controls on the industry.
In the same week as this reckless and destructive US decision, it emerged that China had recorded its 21st month of flat or slightly falling carbon emissions. As Washington tears up environmental regulations, Beijing is extending carbon reporting requirements. China remains the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, though its per capita and cumulative historical emissions are still far behind those of the US. But clean energy drove more than 90% of its investment growth last year.
The Carbon Brief website, which published the emissions analysis, says the numbers suggest that the decline in China’s carbon intensity – emissions per unit of GDP – was below the target set in the last five-year plan, making it hard to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement. The shift in emissions may not prove enduring. There is fear that China’s focus may change; the next five-year plan, due in March, will be key. Some subsidies for renewable power have already been withdrawn. The installation of huge quantities of renewable energy infrastructure has been accompanied by a surge in constructing coal-fired power plants, though the hope is that these are intended primarily as a fallback.
We continue to disregard the actual civilized nations and cavort with the worst of the worst. This is from France24. “Rubio tells Orban ‘your success is our success’ during Hungary visit ahead of elections. During a visit to Budapest Monday, just weeks before Hungary’s parliamentary elections, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that the nationalist leader’s “success” was a success for the US. An ally of President Donald Trump, who has also maintained ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban lags behind the main opposition candidate in opinion polls.” The entire Trump cabinet is feckless, shameless, and incompetent. They are also enabling a backslide in democracy.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed Viktor Orban‘s leadership during a visit to Budapest on Monday, ahead of elections threatening the nationalist prime minister’s hold on power.
Rubio’s visit is the final stage of a whirlwind trip to Europe that also saw him address the Munich Security Conference and visit another right-wing ally, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.
US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his high regard for Orban, saying in a social media post on Friday that the prime minister had produced “phenomenal” results in Hungary.
But Orban, 62, has a fight on his hands for the April 12 legislative elections in Hungary. Polls suggest his Fidesz party is trailing opposition leader Peter Magyar’s TISZA.
“I can say to you with confidence that President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success,” Rubio said during a joint press conference with Orban after their meeting.
“The president has an extraordinarily close relationship to the prime minister, he does, and it has had tangible benefits,” he said.
Europe’s nations have read the writing on the wall, according to CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “Trump’s damage is done. Democrats – and Europe – are struggling to define what’s next.”
Many of the Democrats who came to the Munich Security Conference this weekend want to be president. But even if one of them can win the White House in 2028, they may find they can no longer claim the title every American president since the 1940s has borne: leader of the free world.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom went on stage to insist his state is more permanent than President Donald Trump. But he acknowledged in an interview with CNN that the leaders he met with believe the damage to the transatlantic alliance is irrevocable.
Progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to pitch a left-wing populist foreign policy but made headlines for a massive stumble instead.
A number of Democratic senators hoping to burnish their foreign policy credentials ahead of possible presidential bids found themselves in a painfully awkward moment with the Danish prime minister, as some Democrats tried to smooth over pugnacious remarks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made at the start of the meeting that suggested Trump has not given up his designs on Greenland – a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
And most members of the House of Representatives who planned to attend didn’t come at all after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the plug on the congressional delegation.
European thought leaders were reduced to offering a brief standing ovation to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose speech was far more conciliatory than the one Vice President JD Vance delivered at the same gathering last year. But Rubio had kicked off his trip telling American reporters: “The old world is gone.” He also left the conference to fly onward to Slovakia and Hungary, two countries led by strongmen sympathetic to Trump.
The conference’s opening remarks from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz crystallized Europe’s new reality in what seems to be rapidly becoming a post-American century.
“A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States,” Merz said Friday. “The United States’ claim to leadership has been challenged, and possibly lost.”
It’s more than just words. Merz has said he held “confidential talks” with France on European nuclear deterrence. It’s a stunning admission there’s no longer unconditional trust that the US will do what needs to be done for its transatlantic allies.
“What I’m hearing now is, even if we are able to repair these relationships, it’s going to take generations before they feel comfortable,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona, a possible presidential hopeful who traveled to Munich not long after learning the Trump administration had tried and failed to indict him over a video he made telling troops not to obey illegal orders.
If this continues, the momentum and direction of the world’s political entanglements will change. Who knows what this will mean? This Op Ed piece from MS Now by Anthony L. Fisher discusses Trump and his attempts at an Imperial Presidency. “Libertarians warned about the ‘imperial presidency.’ Too few actually warned about Trump. A recent New York Times op-ed showed the blind spot many libertarians still have for President Donald Trump.”
When I saw the headline “Libertarians Tried to Warn You About Trump” atop a New York Times op-ed last Monday, I thought, “Hmmm, that’s not quite how I remember it.” Adorned with the striking image of the Gadsden flag’s “Don’t Tread on Me” snake about to get curb-stomped by an enormous black jackboot, the piece was written by Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in chief of the libertarian magazine and website Reason — where I worked as a journalist for roughly six years. (I left shortly after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration.)
Sure enough, upon reading the column, I discovered the headline didn’t accurately reflect Mangu-Ward’s argument. She primarily made the case that libertarians have warned for years — under presidents in both major parties — about the dangers of ever-expanding executive authority, what’s been aptly coined the “Imperial Presidency.” Rather than claiming to have specifically warned “about Trump,” the writer boasted that libertarians had long sounded the alarm over the consolidation of such power — power now being used for nefarious purposes by a president who just happens to be Donald Trump. (The Times later that day amended the headline to the less specific but more honest, “Libertarians: We Told You So.”)
I can’t argue with that. To the extent most self-identified professional libertarians warned about Trump, they warned about the awesome powers that could be abused by a generic authoritarian president from either party.
But Trump is not a hypothetical. He always told us who he was. And there are far fewer of us who took (and continue to hold) the comparatively unpopular view among libertarians and other right-of-center fellow travelers that Trump presented as a uniquely authoritarian, vindictive, racist, corrupt and lawless demagogue — of which there isn’t remotely an analog on the other side of the aisle.
The problem is that, even now that Trump has proven us skeptics right on every one of those counts, too many libertarians continue to position themselves safely in a “pox on both your houses” perch — much too nuanced and enlightened to be dragged into partisan rancor. This position is how your movement ends up conflating the tyranny of overbearing, temporary Covid policies in Democratic-run areas as equal to (or worse than) the tyranny of a secret police force acting without due process for everyone when attempting to arrest suspected illegal immigrants, summarily executing Americans in the street and branding them “domestic terrorists” while their bodies are still warm.
All of these thoughts lead to one logical conclusion. The Midterm elections need to depose him and remove the spineless and the true believers, or whatever this is, from Congress.
Just to let you know, we’re having the most unkind Mardi Gras Celebration that even the police have seen. We seem to have been overrun by spontaneous groups of young men that are behaving a lot like the droogies in A Clockwork Orange. I may write about it on Friday; however, I’m busy listening to my friends’ experiences uptown and around the Quarter right now.
Peace, Love, and Understanding to you all!
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Nothing like the threat of yet another war to start a New Year off. Today, the rotter in the White House is threatening to attack Iran if it does not allow peaceful protests. The Trump regime made it clear to the Iranian regime that it would intervene if protestors were shot or killed, that “We are locked and loaded, and ready to go”. Naturally, this was announced on social media, given that usual diplomatic channels appear to be dysfunctional.
I find this very odd, given that peaceful protests in this country have been investigated by the DOJ as acts of terrorism this year. I’ve specifically linked to CNN Coverage of protests at Columbia University here as an example. So much for the Nobel Peace Prize aspirations.
This is from The Guardian. “Iranian officials warn Trump not to cross ‘red line’ over threats to intervene in protests. US president’s posts that US will come to the rescue of protesters prompt warnings of ‘regret-inducing response.'” It is reported today by William Christou.
Donald Trump has threatened to intervene in Iran if its government kills demonstrators, prompting warnings from senior Iranian officials that any American interference would cross a “red line”.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump said that if Iran were to shoot and kill protesters, the US would “come to their rescue”. He added “we are locked and loaded, and ready to go”, without explaining what that might mean in practice.
Protests in Iran are in their sixth day, and are the largest since 2022, when the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini triggered demonstrations across the country. The current unrest was triggered by an unprecedented decline in the value of the national currency on Sunday. The Iranian rial dropping to about 1.4m to the US dollar, further harming an already beleaguered economy.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called Trump’s statement “reckless and dangerous,” and said the country’s military was on standby. He also said the protests had been mostly peaceful, but that attacks on public property would not be tolerated.
“Given President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard within US borders, he of all people should know that criminal attacks on public property cannot be tolerated,” he said.
In response to Trump’s threat of intervention, Ali Shamkhani, adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, warned that Iran’s national security was a “red line, not material for adventurist tweets”.
“Any intervening hand nearing Iran security on pretexts will be cut off with a regret-inducing response,” Shamkhani said in a post on X.
Today’s New York Times’Matthew Purdy has this excellent analysis. “After Watergate, the Presidency Was Tamed. Trump Is Unleashing It. In the 1970s, Congress passed a raft of laws to hold the White House accountable. President Trump has decided they don’t apply to him.”
A power-hungry president had twisted the government into a tool for his personal political benefit. His aides kept an “enemies list” of opponents to be punished. His cronies ran the Justice Department and he made puppets of other agencies that were meant to be independent. Corporations that wanted favorable treatment from the White House were pressured to make illegal contributions to the president’s political coffers.
As revelations of rot in the Nixon administration tumbled out through the 1970s, Senator Lawton Chiles, Democrat of Florida, captured the alarm of the Watergate era: “Nothing will bring the Republic to its knees so quickly as a bone-deep mistrust of the government by its own people,” he said. “We have seen other democracies fall within our own lifetime. Fall through internal corruption rather than outside invasion.”
…
The aim was not just to excise what one aide to President Richard M. Nixon described as “a cancer,” but to prevent a recurrence. “Watergate reform is not for the past or for the present,” Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a Connecticut Republican, wrote in a 1976 addendum to a Senate report. “Our memories may indeed keep us free today. It is for unborn generations who will never know firsthand how close a democracy came to oligarchy.”
From the opening days of his second term, President Trump took aim at Watergate’s ethical checkpoints as if in a shooting gallery. First, he fired 17 inspectors general, a job established in the Watergate era to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in government. He also fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency created by legislation in 1978 to protect government whistle-blowers. Then he fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, created around the same time to guard against financial conflicts of interest by top government officials. And he has used the Justice Department and the F.B.I. as political tools, roles they worked to shed after Watergate.
A strain of conservative legal thinking has been aiming to reassert the president’s powers ever since they were curbed in the post-Watergate era. But while Mr. Trump’s lawyers successfully make the case for expanding presidential authority based on a high-minded Constitutional argument, there is a raw political result. He has removed barriers that might slow his pursuit of a highly personal presidency — punishing opponents and rewarding allies and financial backers while also reaping profits for family businesses that intersect with his powers as president.
You may read the entire analysis at the link. It’s gifted, and it’s worth taking the time to read the entire thing. I was in high school when the entire Watergate scandal unfolded, and I must say that the entire experience profoundly shaped my political views.
We have another TACO event today, which is good news. This is from the AP. “Trump delays increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets, and vanities for a year.” This is reported by Michelle L. Price.
President Donald Trump signed a New Year’s Eve proclamation delaying increased tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for a year, citing ongoing trade talks.
Trump’s order signed Wednesday keeps in place a 25% tariff he imposed in September on those goods, but delays for another year a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture and 50% tariff on kitchen cabinets and vanities.
The increases, which were set to take effect Jan. 1, come as the Republican president instituted a broad swath of taxes on imported goods to address trade imbalances and other issues.
The president has said the tariffs on furniture are needed to “bolster American industry and protect national security.”
The delay is the latest in the roller coaster of Trump’s tariff wars since he returned to office last year, with the president announcing levies at times without warning and then delaying or pulling back from them just as abruptly.
One last bit of analysis by NPR’s Stephen Fowler. “With few Epstein files released, conspiracy theories flourish and questions remain.”
During the 2024 election, President Trump promised to release the Epstein files as part of a campaign message arguing the government was run by powerful people hiding the truth from Americans.
At the start of 2026, many people agree — and believe that he is now one of the powerful few keeping the public in the dark.
In the two weeks since the Justice Department failed to fully meet a legal deadline to release its expansive tranche of files on Jeffrey Epstein, old conspiracy theories about his life and death have subsided and new ones have taken shape. The late financier was a convicted sex offender and accused of sex trafficking minors while associating with top figures in politics, academia and other influential industries.
Both supporters of the president and his opponents have criticized the rollout of documents, often heavily redacted and shared without any clear organization or context. Included in the roughly 40,000 pages of new information published in the last week are unvetted tips from the public — and a complaint made to the FBI more than a decade before Epstein was first criminally charged.
There could be well over a million files still unreleased, along with potentially terabytes-worth of data seized from Epstein’s devices and estate, according to 2020 emails between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York included in the most recent batch of files.
On Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on social media that lawyers were working “around the clock” to review documents but did not specify the scope or scale of the remaining work.
“It truly is an all-hands-on-deck approach and we’re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,” Blanche said. “Required redactions to protect victims take time but they will not stop these materials from being released. The Attorney General’s and this Administration’s goal is simple: transparency and protecting victims.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is threatening to take action against the Justice Department for failing to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed in November, but the law itself contains no penalties or enforcement mechanism.
Politically, the Epstein files saga caps off a rocky first year for an administration facing record-low favorability ratings and a president whose grasp on his base is appearing to slip. Trump spent most of 2025 downplaying the significance of the files, at times lashing out against Republicans who demanded the release of information about other potential perpetrators.
Read more at the link.
So, I’m fighting a cold that won’t give up and trying to spend my last few days of vacation cleaning up the house. It’s definitely a period of out with the old and in with the new for me. I’m fortunate to have a friend helping me in all these endeavors, but the last thing I needed was a damn cold. But, with the wacky weather we’re having this winter, I’m not surprised. We keep jumping from near-freezing temperatures to the 80s. Drastic changes like that always get to me.
I’m wishing all of you the best for this new year. It’s more important than ever to be kind to yourself, and as Maya Angelou once said, “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
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“Out with the old, a new franchise is born on State Controlled Media, redefining late-night television. Mass for shut-ins step aside.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Banana Republics look out! We’re on the road to attaining your status. Yam Tits has had it with all programming that doesn’t reflect his false narratives. There’s also that fake image he tries to project and sell. He’s after all forms of information providers, and just to prove he’s yanking a few chains, I’ve had a difficult time finding critiques in the usual places. So here are three unusual sources for my top reads today.
First up is the CBC. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is the Canadian Public broadcaster. It’s still in business. I grabbed this headline from its Entertainment division. John’s cartoon over there really hits the nail on the head today. FARTUS really doesn’t like the truth. “Trump vs. TV: A play-by-play of a wild week taking on the U.S. president’s naysayers. Mocking leaders isn’t new, but critics say political satire is now in the crosshairs.”
First he came for late-night TV, then a daytime talk show and a crude cartoon.
U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration are fighting battles on all fronts when it comes to mockery and criticism of the 47th commander-in-chief.
As speculation swirls that CBS might have turfed The Late Show with Stephen Colbert because of his recent criticism of parent company Paramount Global agreeing to a $16-million US settlement with the president over a 60 Minutes interview, the White House has also come out swinging this week against the animated series South Park and ABC’s The View.
South Park‘s 27th season premiere episode, which aired on Wednesday, lampooned the president and the CBS-Colbert drama and depicted a naked Trump climbing into bed with Satan. That same day, a co-host of The View accused Trump of being “jealous” of former president Barack Obama’s looks and marriage.
Even though he’s known for mocking a range of people he doesn’t like, Trump’s image, persona and brand are what made him a household name, and he doesn’t take it well when he senses attacks on any of them.
While he would largely take out his anger in a Twitter tirade during his first administration (what X was known as back then), there are concerns that Trump is using his power in his second term to influence corporate decision-making and settle grievances — especially when it comes to the news and entertainment industry.
But freedom of expression groups say the political satire and parody that are now under fire are art forms that are not only constitutionally protected but vital to public discourse.
“We have mocked presidents and leaders in this country since before this was a country,” Will Creeley, legal director of the Philadelphia-based advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told CBC News.
“If you can’t make fun of who’s running the country, then the First Amendment doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
So, I suppose using CBC for a source doesn’t surprise you. I probably will surprise you with this one. It’s from The Hill, which isn’t surprising, but the source of the story will be. “Fox News reporter: Trump FCC targeting ‘The View’ could impact network someday.” The way things are going, some day is not that far away. Dominick Mastrangelo has the headline.
Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna warned over the weekend that President Trump’s criticism of networks and shows such as ABC and “The View” could eventually hit conservative media outlets under a Democratic presidential administration.
“As much as it would be nice to think about, like, ‘Oh, “The View’s” gonna go away. Whew, that sounds nice,’ we also have to consider this isn’t the only administration that’s going to be there forever,” Acuna said during an appearance on “The Big Weekend Show”.
“A tool that can be used by this administration can very well be used by the next. And if they were able to do away with ‘The View,’ they could very well — the next administration that comes in that doesn’t like Fox could do the same.”
Trump has repeatedly ridiculed ABC News over its coverage of his administration and threatened to use the power of his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to scrutinize the network’s broadcast license.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr, during a recent interview on Fox, suggested “The View,” the network’s table talk news and debate program, could face “consequences” over panelists’ criticisms of Trump.
The Mediate article is worth reading.”Fox News Correspondent Warns Colleagues Not to Celebrate Trump’s FCC for Targeting The View: Next Administration ‘Could Do the Same’ to Fox.” This story comes from the desk of Joe DePaolo. You will notice that there is no shortage of political cartoonists weighing in on the topic. We are all South Park now.
A Fox News correspondent delivered a warning to colleagues celebrating President Donald Trump’s FCC for targeting The View: What goes around could well come around.
During a panel discussion Saturday night on The Big Weekend Show, Fox News senior correspondent Alicia Acuna cautioned her colleagues to be careful what they wish for when it comes to the fate of the ABC daytime talk show — which FCC chairman Brendan Carr recently said could face “consequences” following Joy Behar’s recent criticism of the president.
“As much as it would be nice to think about, like, ‘Oh, The View’s gonna go away. Whew, that sounds nice!’ We also have to consider this isn’t the only administration that’s going to be there forever,” Acuna said. “A tool that can be used by this administration can very well be used by the next. And if they were able to do away with The View they could very well — the next administration that comes in that doesn’t like Fox — could do the same.”
Fox News host Guy Benson concurred.
“I think that is a wise warning,” Benson said.
Carr — in a Thursday interview on Fox’s America’s Newsroom with anchor Bill Hemmer — said The View could have “issues.”
“Is The View now in the crosshairs of this administration?” Hemmer asked Carr.
“Look, it’s entirely possible that there’s issues over there,” Carr said. “I mean, again, stepping back, this broader dynamic, once President Trump has exposed these media gatekeepers and smashed this facade, there’s a lot of consequences. I think the consequences of that aren’t quite finished. And look, The View‘s got a lot challenges there. It wasn’t that long ago, I think, one episode, one show alone, they had to stop, interrupt the show, and read four separate legal notices to try to avoid legal liability. So I’m not surprised to hear people saying that their ratings are struggling.”
Now for my third source, Inside Radio. “Former FCC Chairs Warn of Troubling Shifts in Media Oversight, DEI Policy.”
Former Federal Communications Commission members are sounding the alarm — the nation’s media watchdog is being weaponized, its independence eroded, and decades-old norms tossed aside. At the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council’s annual Former FCC Chairs’ Symposium on Friday, they said the stakes for media — and democracy — have rarely been higher.
During a wide-ranging discussion in Washington, media policy took center stage early in the conversation. Former FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn issued a blunt assessment. “The Trump FCC 2.0 has abandoned its traditional role, and it has been unprecedented over, you know, when you look out over the 90-year history,” she said.
The former Chair under President Obama added that the Commission is now stepping into areas historically beyond its scope. “Traditionally, the FCC focused on communications-specific concerns, not general corporate employment practices. That’s the shift that we’re talking about here, and that is what I find problematic,” Clyburn said.
The panel then turned to a longstanding pillar of broadcast regulation — the public interest standard — and whether it still has a place in today’s competitive media environment.
Reed Hundt, who chaired the FCC during the Clinton administration, pointed out the inherent vagueness of the concept.
“The problem with the public interest standard is that you don’t know what it is when you see it, and you can’t define it,” Hundt said. “Every time the FCC has tried to write it down, the appellate court has thrown out their effort.” He suggested the Commission should consider eliminating the standard entirely. “It shouldn’t be a weapon that anybody can use. It should be a guideline for the industry that can be followed. But it isn’t,” Hundt said.
Clyburn reinforced the point by contrasting the Commission’s historical focus with its recent approach. “Traditionally, the FCC focused on communications-specific concerns, not general corporate employment practices,” she said. That is reference to the Trump administration’s push to get broadcasters and other industries regulated by the FCC to abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“Lawfare” uses laws and legislation to limit the press, whether that means bureaucratic licencing requirements for journalists and media houses or using defamation laws to intimidate critical voices. Defamation laws have manifested as anti-blasphemy laws in Pakistan; national security laws in Hong Kong; and through “fake news” laws with broad phrasing such as those that gained steam under the pretext of Covid-19 safety but have been used to control populations.
Even Nobel laureate Maria Ressa has been the target of multiple cyber libel charges, in addition to the harassment and threats incited towards her. The charges against her under these laws were also used as a threat to prevent her from traveling to Oslo to receive her Nobel peace prize before the courts eventually relented. Similarly, an increasing number of strategic lawsuits against public participation – known as SLAPPS – have been used by powerful figures around the world to intimidate critics who may not be able to withstand the financial or psychological toll of court cases.
Mass communication relies on complex networks: from the initial report until the audience receives the final story, access to information requires different physical and digital infrastructures.
It comes as no surprise, then, that autocrats would seek to control infrastructure as a way of repressing freedom of expression. It is easy to point to the extreme, physical destruction of infrastructure, such as the Israeli airstrikes hitting multiple Palestinian media houses – including IMS partner Filastinyat – or in 2022 the Russian bombing of the Kyiv TV Tower. But control of infrastructure is often more insidious.
There is a power play between governments and tech companies over who owns and controls our means of communication – and who has access to people’s data. It is not uncommon for telecoms companies to be owned by oligarchs who are friendly towards a regime. Even in cases such as the Norwegian mobile network Telenor, which left Myanmar rather than cooperating with the military, the infrastructure was sold to a company that was willing to cooperate with the military.
Big Tech allows much to happen on its watch. While social media platforms have been used to spark revolution, they have also been sources of hate speech and disinformation, leading to polarisation and violence. A lack of knowledge of the local contexts in which they operate allows mis- and disinformation to spread from government and unofficial sources. Without consistent policies on what they are willing to tolerate, Big Tech seems most motivated by protecting profits, leaving countries with oppressive governments only once they are forced to and not because of ethical considerations for populations.
Autocrats have a variety of tools at their disposal to supress and intimidate critical voices. The above four steps create fear or lead journalists to lose or leave their jobs, or – in extreme cases – costs journalists’ lives.
Subsequently, defending press freedom and freedom of expression cannot be managed by fighting on only one front. This has always been clear, and strongly underlined by events in 2021 (and the beginning of 2022). Interventions must come from legislative angles and from lobbying international tech companies that profit while looking away from undemocratic policies. And the international community needs to hold their focus on the struggles of journalists and populations under autocracies, not just when dramatic events grab the headlines, but in the day-to-day battle for people’s rights.
“Trump’s lawyers cite Murdoch’s advanced age to submit to questioning under oath earlier than would be normal, suggesting that Murdoch will either be too ill or dead to testify at trial.”
Trump’s lawyers cited Murdoch’s advanced age to submit to questioning under oath as a chief argument in their motion to compel him to testify earlier than would be normal in such a lawsuit, suggesting that Murdoch will either be too ill or dead to testify by the time the case goes to trial.
“Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares, and is presumed to live in New York, New York,” Trump’s lawyers said in their legal filing in Miami federal court.
“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” the lawyers wrote.
The attorneys also cited the fact that there is, as yet, no order scheduling the exchange of evidence and testimony in the case.
You’ll notice how this got a lot of ‘play’ in Scotland and the UK. This article appeared in The Guardian, and the film was all over Social Media. “Rough deal: Social media roasts Trump’s golf game after clip appears to show alleged cheating in Scotland. Trump has long been accused of cheating at golf and mixing politics and business on the course.” Josh Marcus has the story about the ball that went into the roughest of the rough only to be replaced on the green by his caddie.
In the video circulated by liberal commentators, a caddy appears to walk ahead of the golf-loving president in his golf cart and drop a ball behind him as the president approaches.
“Trump working hard to bring down grocery prices,” the caption says, making a satirical reference to the president’s campaign promises to tackle inflation and costs.
“For the morons that think Trump doesn’t cheat at golf and wins all those club championships fair and square….watch his caddie here,” another account wrote.
The phrase “commander in cheat” was soon trending on the social media site.
“The video of Trump’s caddy doing an Oddjob Slazenger drop isn’t a big deal; cheating at golf isn’t nearly the worst thing about Trump,” wrote The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols. “But watching the cult of personality try to explain it away is really some creepy North Korean level stuff.”
The Independent has requested comment from the White House.
The president has faced a long list of accusations that he doesn’t play fair from figures ranging from actor Samuel Jackson to LPGA player Suzann Pettersen.
Trump’s alleged cheating, which has always denied, is even the subject of a book: Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat.
“At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: Pele,” Reilly writes in the book.
The enticing Nichols quote can be found on X. Just letting you know, since I’m not going there or linking to it. If this little romp across the pond was supposed to highlight the strength of Orange Caligula, it failed. Although it was funny watching all the EU leaders head to Scotland to try to get TACO to just freaking make a decision on the tariffs. If he’s interested in bringing down inflation, tariffs would still not be in the headlines. Yammering about lower interest rates to the Fed Chair wouldn’t be in that policy either. He needs to find the closest community college to take Economics 101 and 102. He absolutely knows nothing about anything economics-related.
If this is really the best he can do to get the public attention off the Murdoch scandals, he’s surely failing. The Rapist-in-chief is now clearly in the box with Epstein’s enabler and partner in sexual assault and battery of children. This is from AXIOS. “Ghislaine Maxwell files Supreme Court brief appealing Epstein conviction.” There are at least two guys sitting on that court who have assaulted women. What does that say about justice and our country?
Ghislaine Maxwell pressed ahead with an appeal to the Supreme Court on Monday, seeking to overturn her conviction on the grounds that she was unlawfully prosecuted for sex trafficking minors with Jeffrey Epstein.
Why it matters: The filing by Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in 2022, comes just three days after she met with a top Justice Department official tapped to re-examine the Epstein case.
The Trump administration has faced weeks of bipartisan backlash after reneging on promises to release all files related to the now-deceased sex trafficker.
MAGA activists have suggested that Maxwell, a British former socialite, could be the key to exposing new information about the alleged elite pedophile ring at the heart of Epstein conspiracy theories.
Zoom in: Maxwell’s appeal revolves around a highly controversial 2007 plea agreement Epstein negotiated with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida.
“The United States,” the plea agreement stated, “agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to” four other suspects.
Maxwell was not listed as one of those suspects — but her lawyers argue she didn’t need to be.
Between the lines: Maxwell’s attorneys, the husband-wife team of Mona and David Oscar Markus contends that a plain reading of the deal protects unnamed co-conspirators as well, since it explicitly says it’s “not limited to” those listed.
Markus also argues that language in the deal — promising immunity from “the United States” — means Maxwell couldn’t be prosecuted for Epstein-related crimes anywhere in the country.
“The government’s argument, across the board, is essentially an appeal to what it wishes the agreement had said, rather than what it actually says,” Mona Markus wrote in the petition.
The other side: The Justice Department says former U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who negotiated the deal, didn’t have authority to bind other federal districts — including the Southern District of New York, where Maxwell was ultimately tried and convicted.
The intrigue: Federal appeals courts have split over the key question of whether a plea deal struck by one U.S. Attorney’s Office applies to the entire Justice Department.
The Justice Department acknowledged that divide in its own brief, but has urged the Supreme Court to reject Maxwell’s appeal.
“The government was not even aware of [Maxwell’s] role in Epstein’s scheme at that time,” DOJ argued, calling her “at most, an incidental third-party beneficiary of the agreement.”
Welcome to another Monday in Trumplandia.
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“I think White House Goebbels cracked a smile.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It’s another record-breaking heat and humidity day in the Big Easy. I’m doing my part of taking it easy by hanging out under a ceiling fan and a tower fan. I always feel like I should be growing gills on days like this as an evolutionary measure. It’s hard to be in climate change denial down here, but I still see folks thinking it’s just a bit of odd weather. Summers are always hot, you know. While checking for other headlines, I found this one at The Guardian. I wanted to put it up top here before I get carried away by the L.A. protests. “Trump’s EP to claim power-plant emissions ‘not significant’ – but study says otherwise, US power sector would be world’s sixth largest emitter of planet-heating greenhouse gas if it were a country – study.”
Donald Trump’s administration is set to claim planet-heating pollution spewing from US power plants is so globally insignificant it should be spared any sort of climate regulation.
But, in fact, the volume of these emissions is stark – if the US power sector were a country, it would be the sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reportedly drafted a plan to delete all restrictions on greenhouse gases coming from coal and gas-fired power plants in the US because they “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” and are a tiny and shrinking share of the overall global emissions that are driving the climate crisis.
However, a new analysis shows that the emissions from American fossil-fuel plants are prominent on a global scale, having contributed 5% of all planet-heating pollution since 1990. If it were a country, the US power sector would be the sixth largest emitter in the world, eclipsing the annual emissions from all sources in Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Canada, among other nations.
“That seems rather significant to me,” said Jason Schwartz, co-author of the report from New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “If this administration wants to argue only China has significant emissions they can try to do that, but a court will review that, and under any reasonable interpretation will find that US power plant emissions are significant too.”
Fossil fuel-derived electricity is responsible for the second largest source of emissions in the US, behind transportation. No country in history has caused more carbon pollution than America, and while its power sector’s emissions have declined somewhat in recent years, largely through a market-based decline in heavily-polluting coal, it remains a major driver of the climate crisis.
The cocktail of toxins emitted by power plants have a range of impacts, the NYU analysis points out. A single year of emissions in 2022 will cause 5,300 deaths in the US from air pollution over many decades, along with climate impacts that will result in global damages of $370bn, including $225bn in global health damages and $75bn in lost labor productivity.
“We were surprised when we ran the numbers just how quickly these deaths start tallying up,” said Schwartz. “All of these harms stack up on top of each other. Climate change will be the most important public health issue this century and we can’t just ignore the US power sector’s contribution to that public health crisis.”
Last night, I watched BBC Live again for decent coverage of the L.A. Riots. I haven’t been this reliant on UK-based media since the Nixon Days. I woke up to lots of complaints on social media posts about the coverage of the Cable News presentation. I luckily found BBC Live after seeing reruns of old news programs on both MSNBC and CNN. The main channels had sporadic coverage. It was old-fashioned style coverage where the reporter at the scene reported, and the guy or girl in the chair asked questions. Reporters from the UK (Nick Stern), Xinhua, China, and Australia were hit. Australian Reporter Lauren Thompson from 9News was on air when a police officer aimed and fired at her legs.
US correspondent Lauren Tomasi was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet fired by a police officer who was standing guard in the city’s downtown district.
It happened on the third day of violent protests that erupted in the US’s second-most populous city in response to sweeping arrests of alleged illegal immigrants.
Tomasi was struck as she reported live near the front line of the protests surrounding the city’s metropolitan detention centre.
Just seconds after she wrapped up a live cross to Australia, one of the officers turned his gun towards Tomasi and fired at her from close range.
She yelled in pain before the camera turned away. Tomasi was left sore but otherwise unharmed.
You may watch their footage at the link. Several reporters at the scene have complained that the L.A. Police had targeted them even though they were clearly wearing clothing and helmets identifying them as press. Yam Tits sent the California National Guard to the scene even though neither Mayor Bass or Governor Newsome had asked for the Guard to be activated. There are clear legal problems with this, and the Governor is acting on them.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a Monday post that California will sue President Trump, saying he “illegally acted” to federalize the National Guard during protests against federal immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
The big picture: Trump on Saturday signed a memorandum calling in the National Guard — despite opposition from the state’s and the city’s Democratic leadership.
Driving the news: Newsom, after saying Sunday that the Golden State would be taking Trump to court, wrote in a Monday X post that the president had “flamed the fires.”
He added, “The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him.”
Trump’s order cited “[n]umerous incidents of violence and disorder” and “violent protests” but did not specifically mention California or the Los Angeles area.
The other side: “Gavin Newsom’s feckless leadership is directly responsible for the lawless riots and violent attacks on law enforcement in Los Angeles,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement provided to Axios.
Jackson continued, “Instead of filing baseless lawsuits meant to score political points with his left-wing base, Newsom should focus on protecting Americans by restoring law and order to his state.”
Friction point: Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other Democrats have argued Trump’s deployment of the National Guard was an unnecessary escalation, while Trump administration officials have railed against their leadership.
Border czar Tom Homan did not rule out arrests for Democratic officials in the state should they impede law enforcement or harbor undocumented immigrants in a Saturday interview with NBC News, but said he does not believe Bass had “crossed the line yet.”
“Come and get me, tough guy,” Newsom wrote in response.
Homan, in a Monday morning interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” argued the NBC report was “dishonest.”
“I was clear they haven’t crossed the line,” Homan said Monday. “But they’re not above the law either.”
“I was clear they haven’t crossed the line,” Homan said Monday. “But they’re not above the law either.”
Zoom in: Hegseth in his Monday post included a clip from an interview with commentator Brian Tyler Cohen in which the governor described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as “a joke” and characterized Trump as “unhinged.”
“This is a preview for things to come,” he said. “This isn’t about LA, per se. It’s about us today, it’s about you, everyone watching, tomorrow.”
Context: Trump’s Saturday memorandum, which called into federal service some 2,000 National Guard personnel for 60 days, cited rarely used federal powers and sidestepped Newsom.
“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” Newsom said in a statement.
David R Lurie–writing at the Substack Public Notice–has this headline this morning. “A felon in the White House is making crime legal. Meanwhile, he’s creating fake crimes to punish the law-abiding.”
Trumpists have resorted to inventing new offenses so as to transform law-abiding immigrants into criminals. For example, Trump has declared slivers of land along the border to be “military zones” for the sole purpose of charging migrants with trespassing. The administration has also declared that undocumented immigrants have an obligation to “register” with the government so they can be indicted for failing to do so. They’re jailing immigrants who legally entered the United States under a Biden-era asylum law by retroactively declaring the program to be “illegal.”
Most tellingly, and insidiously, ICE agents desperate to meet the increasing quotas the White House has set for deporting “illegals” have taken to targeting the most vulnerable immigrants: Those intent on following the law and engaging in productive work.
As Sen. Markwayne Mullin put it on CNN yesterday, “regardless of what they may be doing right now” — including whether they are abiding by the law and are gainfully employed — undocumented persons “are illegal and they are criminals.”
It’s become routine for gangs of ICE goons to gather at immigration courts and arrest immigrants who are following the law by showing up for hearings. Immigration judges, cowed into facilitating Trump’s mass deportation schemes, have been dutifully dismissing cases so as to allow the immigrants to be immediately jailed as “illegals.” In one recent case, armed thugs dragged into an elevator an immigrant who had fainted after they had swooped in to grab her while her attorney was in the restroom.
State courts have also become favored hunting zones for ICE. Judges who have the temerity to point out that this tactic discourages immigrants from complying with court orders, and thus the law, are being threatened. Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, for example, was jailed and indicted on the flimsiest of criminal charges for allegedly helping a man evade ICE. Her indictment has been decried by other jurists as a “threat [to] public trust in the judicial system and the ability of the public to avail themselves of courthouses without fear of reprisal.”
ICE gangs are also now routinely assembling in restaurants and other places of work, often bearing submachine guns, cuffing everyone in sight, and jailing some, simply on suspicion of being “illegals.” Recently, a gang of armed and masked ICE officers terrified patrons and workers in a San Diego restaurant, and even cuffed the manager. The rifle-toting “law enforcement” officers retreated from the scene by shooting flash bang grenades into a crowd of citizens distressed by their misconduct. (They only managed to arrest two “illegals.”)
Despite the fact that Trump has had to resort to fabricating new crimes to turn law-abiding immigrants into targets for deportation, the GOP is now about to make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes over $150 billion for immigration enforcement and seeks to make ICE the most highly funded law enforcement agency in the United States.
And as Trump’s threats about a military invasion of Los Angeles County, which appeared to be commencing through the use of federalized National Guard units as this piece was being prepared for publication Sunday evening, demonstrate that his administration is intent on using its growing immigration “law enforcement” apparatus to wreak havoc in America’s cities, and to threaten to make peaceful protest a crime.
Brian Stelter from CNN has this odd headline. “Dr. Phil was embedded with ICE during controversial Los Angeles immigration raids.” What the actual Hell is this? This is absolutely the “reality” show administration!
As federal agents prepared to fan out in Los Angeles for a controversial immigration crackdown, the officers were greeted by a familiar face: Dr. Phil McGraw.
The television personality and his camera crew were on hand before and after the raids that took place on Friday and triggered several days of street protests.
McGraw was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations,” according to his conservative TV channel, MeritTV.
McGraw also had “exclusive” access to Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, a spokesperson for the channel said. The two men sat down for taped conversations about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts both “the day before and day after the LA operation.”
The TV personality and Homan were also together at the Homeland Security Investigations field office in L.A. on the morning the raids began.
McGraw’s presence on the ground in L.A. reinforces the made-for-TV nature of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The former daytime talk show host was embedded with ICE officials in Chicago back in January, when some federal agents were told to be camera-ready for a show of force at the very start of President Trump’s second term.
A MeritTV spokesperson said this time was different, however. “In order to not escalate any situation, Dr. Phil McGraw did not join and was not embedded” during the L.A. raids, the channel spokesperson said.
Instead, he hung out at the field office and had face time with Homan. The conversations will air on “Dr. Phil Primetime” on Monday and Tuesday night.
Evidently, The New Republic and I are sympatico. “What the Hell Was Dr. Phil Doing at the ICE Raids in Los Angeles? As if things weren’t already bad enough, Trump’s pseudo-doctor lackey is fanning the flames in California.” They’re evidently going on a full-scale propaganda pogrom. The New York Times‘ Billy Witz remembers a different protest in 1992. “When the National Guard Went to L.A. in 1992, the Situation Was Far Different. The skirmishes with immigration agents of the past few days are dwarfed by the widespread rioting, vandalism, and violence that engulfed whole neighborhoods in 1992.” Republicans have been displaying selective memory all day. I’ve read assertions that it was Nancy Pelosi’s fault that the National Guard wasn’t called during J6. And that Trump had called up like 2000 troops. As I demonstrated in the top link, these things are on film and debunked all over the place but it doesn’t stop Yam Tits’ Cult and their low information mindsets.
Some Republicans have drawn parallels between President Trump’s dispatching of National Guard troops to Los Angeles on Saturday and what happened in 1992, when soldiers and Marines were sent to the Los Angeles area to restore order after the Rodney King riots.
But that was a far different situation.
In contrast with the isolated skirmishes seen in Los Angeles County over the past few days, there were neighborhoods in 1992 that had devolved into something resembling a lawless dystopia. Drivers were pulled from cars and beaten. Buildings were burned. Businesses were looted. In all, 63 people died during the riots, including nine who were shot by the police.
The mayhem, which went on for six days, was rooted in Black residents’ anger over years of police brutality. It ignited after four officers were found not guilty of using excessive force against Mr. King, a Black motorist who had been pulled over after a high-speed chase, even though videotape evidence clearly showed the officers brutally beating him. That anger had erupted before, notably in the Watts riots of 1965.
The violence in 1992 was also fueled by tensions between the Black and Korean American communities in the area, and by the shooting death of a Black girl by a Korean American shopkeeper. It got so far out of control that major-league sports events were postponed or moved to safer locations, dusk-to-dawn curfews were imposed, schools were closed and mail delivery was withheld in some neighborhoods.
On the third day of the violence, President George H.W. Bush activated the National Guard at the request of Gov. Pete Wilson and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles. Thousands of Army and Marine troops were sent into Los Angeles as well. Caravans including Humvees and other armored vehicles rolled into the city along the freeways.
The protests of 2025 bear little if any comparison to the widespread upheaval and violence of 1992. The protesters have directed their anger mainly at ICE agents, not at fellow residents, and the demonstrations have so far done relatively little damage to buildings or businesses.
I agree with Robert Reich writing for The Guardian. “We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state. The national guard’s deployment in Los Angeles sets the US on a familiar authoritarian pathway. History shows the results.” We have nationwide protests coming up this Saturday, the 14th. I’m sure the world will be watching.
Now that Donald Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his big, beautiful bill has been stymied, and his multi-billionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?
On Friday morning, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conductedraids across Los Angeles – including at two Home Depots and a clothing wholesaler – in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Though figures vary, they reportedly arrested 121 people.
They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shoot pepper balls, rubber bullets, teargas, and flash-bang grenades.
On Saturday, Trump escalated the confrontations, ordering at least 2,000 national guard troops to be deployed in Los Angeles county to help quell the protests.
He said that any demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, called the protests an “insurrection”.
On Saturday evening, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, threatened to deploy active-duty marines, saying: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.”
We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state.
Last week, raids in San Diego, in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Berkshires led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.
Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. Ice officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across the US and immediately arresting people – including migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges.
History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.
Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps:
(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”;
(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians inside the country;
(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests, and detain people without due process;
(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and
(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.
We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself.
Those who are given authority over aspects of it – the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law – seek other opportunities to invoke their authority.
Rebecca Solnit has this to add at her Meditations in an Emergency Blog. “Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence.”
I think maybe it’s begun, the bigger fiercer backlash against the Trump Administration which is itself a violent backlash against every good thing that’s happened over the past several decades – the advance of rights for nature, women, children, indigenous peoples, BIPOC and immigrants/refugees, queer people, trans people, people with disabilities, workers, the right of us all to be free from being poisoned by food, water, air. It began in Los Angeles, the city of angels, a city of almost four million people, almost half of them Latino, in a region of almost twelve million that two thousand California National Guards cannot and will not subjugate. All they can do is punish and incite, and I hope that some of the protesters are telling them they’re violating their mission and maybe the law. In the nonwhite-majority state of California, which recently advanced to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.
We are escalating because they are escalating. But as a smart guy on BlueSky noted, he’s “seeing a massive divide online between Angelenos of all political stripes who understand that the protests in LA yesterday were mostly peaceful and any violence was ICE-initiated and East Coast establishment liberals lecturing ‘the left’ on how riots just amplify right wing talking points.” This is familiar ground, the idea that no matter what the right does, however much the systematic violence harms us, however horrible a police murder or another violation of human rights such as ICE’s grabbing people off the street, we have the responsibility to remain not just peaceful but peaceful in a way that pleases our enemies. It becomes collective responsibility and collective guilt because even if a few people in a few places torch something or break something, it’s supposed to indict the whole movement, and has often been used to justify more institutional violence.
Her,e it’s also useful to make a distinction between property damage (which protesters in the USA in our era have done from time to time) and harming living beings (which is largely something done by law enforcement in these demonstrations). Property destruction can be dramatic theater (suffragists in early twentieth-century London broke all the plate glass windows on a stretch of shopping street; no living beings were at risk), can be actual protection (the firefighters taking an axe to the door to rescue the people from the blaze), or acts of intimidation (the husband breaking the furniture to convey to his wife he can break her too). All I’ve read about so far in L.A. is property damage by protesters, while we’ve seen many kinds of violence and intimidation from the heavily armored and armed thugs serving the Trump Administration’s war on immigrants.”
These are indeed Dark Times.
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“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBSshows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
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We’re just beginning to explore the depths of depravity that Trump and his buddies will go to just feel powerful and get richer. This is from
I’ve always argued here and in classes that the biggest economic policies of the Reagan and Bush years were tax cuts that made it more profitable to gamble on financial assets rather than to actually produce goods and services. The changes in tax policies that cut upper brackets, then treated capital gains as a tax slash, and other ridiculous policies mean that money never lands where it can actually do good. It also creates a lot of idle hands and minds.
We continue to disregard the actual civilized nations and cavort with the worst of the worst. 
Europe’s nations have read the writing on the wall, according to 
If this continues, the momentum and direction of the world’s political entanglements will change. Who knows what this will mean? This Op Ed piece from
Today’s 
You may read the entire analysis at the link. It’s gifted, and it’s worth taking the time to read the entire thing. I was in high school when the entire Watergate scandal unfolded, and I must say that the entire experience profoundly shaped my political views.
One last bit of analysis by
Read more at the link.
So, I suppose using CBC for a source doesn’t surprise you. I probably will surprise you with this one. It’s from 
Now for my third source, 
It’s really a difficult period of American History if the rabbit hole I have to go down into is the country’s ongoing loss of First Amendment Rights. But killing a free press is the first strategy of a nascent dictator-wannabe. Give an old professor a break as she heads straight to the academic studies. IMS keeps track of Journalism around the world. I was particularly drawn to this piece. “
You’ll notice how this got a lot of ‘play’ in Scotland and the UK. 
The enticing Nichols quote can be found on X. Just letting you know, since I’m not going there or linking to it. If this little romp across the pond was supposed to highlight the strength of Orange Caligula, it failed. Although it was funny watching all the EU leaders head to Scotland to try to get TACO to just freaking make a decision on the tariffs. If he’s interested in bringing down inflation, tariffs would still not be in the headlines. Yammering about lower interest rates to the Fed Chair wouldn’t be in that policy either. He needs to find the closest community college to take Economics 101 and 102. He absolutely knows nothing about anything economics-related.
Last night, I watched BBC Live again for decent coverage of the L.A. Riots. I haven’t been this reliant on UK-based media since the Nixon Days. I woke up to lots of complaints on social media posts about the coverage of the Cable News presentation. I luckily found BBC Live after seeing reruns of old news programs on both MSNBC and CNN. The main channels had sporadic coverage. It was old-fashioned style coverage where the reporter at the scene reported, and the guy or girl in the chair asked questions. Reporters from the 
You may watch their footage at the link. Several reporters at the scene have complained that the L.A. Police had targeted them even though they were clearly wearing clothing and helmets identifying them as press. Yam Tits sent the California National Guard to the scene even though neither Mayor Bass or Governor Newsome had asked for the Guard to be activated. There are clear legal problems with this, and the Governor is acting on them.
David R Lurie–
Evidently, 
I agree with Robert Reich writing for
Last week, raids in San Diego, in 
Rebecca Solnit has this to add at her 
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder. 
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at 
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the 
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from 
CBS 
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